ROUTINE AND REACTION
Where is the pain that does not become deadened after a thousand
years? or what is the nature of that pleasure or happiness which never
wearies by monotony? Earthly pleasures and pains are short in
proportion as they are keen; of any others, which are both intense and
lasting, we can form no idea.... To beings constituted as we are, the
monotony of singing Psalms would be as great an affliction as the
pains of hell and might even be pleasantly interrupted by them.
JOWETT, Introduction to Plato's _Phaedo_.
St Benedict's common sense is nowhere more strikingly shown than in his
division of the routine of monastic life between the three occupations of
divine service, manual labour and reading. Not only has this arrangement
the merit of developing the different sides of men's natures, spirit, body
and brain, but it fulfils a deep psychological necessity. The essence of
communal life is regularity, but no human being can subsist without a
further ingredient of variety. St Benedict knew well enough that unless he
provided the stimulus of change within the Rule, outraged nature would
seek for it outside. Hence the careful adjustment of occupations to
combine variety with regularity. The services were the supreme joy and
duty of the monk and nun and the life of the convent was centred in its
church. But these services were not excessively long and were divided from
each other by periods of sleep by night and of work, or study, or
meditation by day, after the manner which Crashaw inimitably set forth in
his _Description of a Religious House and Condition of Life_:
A hasty portion of prescribed sleep;
Obedient slumbers, that can wake and weep,
And sing, and sigh, and work, and sleep again;
Still rolling a round sphere of still-returning pain.
Hands full of hearty labours; pains that pay
And prize themselves; do much, that more they may,
And work for work, not wages; let tomorrow's
New drops wash off the sweat of this day's sorrows.
A long and daily-dying life, which breathes
A respiration of reviving deaths.
The monastic day was divided into seven offices and the time at which
these were said varied slightly according to the season of the year. The
night office began about 2 a.m., when the nuns rose from their beds and
entered their choir, where Matins were said, followed immediately by
Lauds. The next service was Prime, said at 6 or 7 a.m., and then
throughout the day came Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, with an
interval of about three hours between them. The time of these monastic
Hours (as they were called) changed gradually after the time of St
Benedict, and later None, which should have been at 3 p.m., was said at
noon, leaving the nuns from about 12 midday to 5 p.m. in the winter and 1
p.m. to 8 p.m. in the summer for work. Compline, the last service of all,
was said at 7 p.m. in winter and at 8 p.m. in summer, after which the nuns
were supposed to retire immediately to bed in their dorter, where (in the
words of the Syon _Rule_) "none shal jutte up on other wylfully, nor spyt
up on the stayres, goyng up or down, nor in none other place repreuably,
but yf they trede it out forthwyth"![907] They had in all about eight
hours sleep, broken in the middle by the night service; and they had three
meals, a light repast of bread and beer after Prime in the morning, a
solid dinner to the accompaniment of reading aloud, and a short supper
immediately after vespers at 5 or 6 p.m.[908]
Except for certain specified periods of relaxation, strict silence was
supposed to be observed for a large part of the day, and if it were
necessary for the nuns to communicate with each other, they were urged to
do so in an abbreviated form, or by signs. Thus in 1319 Bishop Stapeldon
of Exeter wrote to the nuns of Polsloe
that silence be kept in due places, according to the Rule and
observances of St Benedict; and, if it be desirable that any word be
spoken in the aforesaid places, for any reasonable occasion, then let
it be gently and so low that it be scarce heard of the other nuns, and
in as few words as may be needed for the comprehension of those who
hear; and better in Latin than in any other tongue; yet the Latin need
not be well-ordered by way of grammar, but thus, _candela_, _liber_,
_missale_, _gradale_, _panis_, _vinum_, _cervisia_, _est_, _non_,
_sic_ and so forth[909].
The nuns of Syon had a table of signs drawn up for them by Thomas Betsone,
one of the brethren of the house, a person of extraordinary ingenuity and
no sense of humour[910]. The sort of dumb pandemonium which went on at the
Syon dinner table must have been more mirth provoking than speech. The
sister who desired fish would "wagge her hande displaied sidelynges in
manere of a fissh taill," she who wanted milk would "draw her left little
fynger in maner of mylkyng"; for mustard one would "hold her nose in the
uppere part of her righte fiste and rubbe it," and another for salt would
"philippe with her right thombe and his forefynger ouere the left thombe";
another, desirous of wine, would "meue her fore fynger vp and downe vpon
the ende of her thombe afore her eghe"; and the guilty sacristan, struck
by the thought that she had not provided incense for the mass, would "put
her two fyngers vnto her nose thirles (nostrils)." There are no less than
106 signs in the table and on the whole it is not surprising that the Rule
enjoins that "it is never leful to use them witheoute some reson and
profitable nede, ffor ofte tyme more hurt ethe an euel sygne than an euel
worde, and more offence it may be to God"[911].
[Illustration: PLATE VI
DOMINICAN NUNS IN QUIRE]
The time set apart in the monastic day for work was divided between brain
work and manual labour. In the golden days of monasticism the time devoted
to reading enabled the monasteries to become homes of learning; splendid
libraries were collected for the use of the monks and in the scriptorium
men skilled in writing and in illumination copied books and maintained the
great series of chronicles, in which the middle ages live again. The nuns
of certain Anglo-Saxon houses, and of certain continental houses at a
later date, had some reputation for learning. In early days, too, the
hours devoted to labour were spent in the fields, or more often in the
workshops of the house; and those who had been skilled in crafts in the
world continued to exercise them. The nuns of Anglo-Saxon England were
famed for the needlework executed during the hours of work. Besides this
labour the Rule ordained that the monks and nuns should take it in turns
to serve their brethren in the kitchen every week and an eleventh century
chronicler records "in the monasteries I saw counts cooking in the
kitchens and margraves leading the pigs out to feed"[912]. It was by
reason of this intellectual and manual labour that the early monks
rendered, as it were incidentally, an immense service to civilisation.
Their aim and purpose was the salvation of their souls, but because the
Rule under which they lived declared that labour was one of the means to
that salvation, they added many of the merits of the active to those of
the contemplative life. The early Benedictines were great missionaries,
ardent scholars, enlightened landowners and even energetic statesmen. The
early Cistercians made the woods and wildernesses, in which they settled,
blossom like a rose. But apart from the social services thus rendered to
civilisation, the threefold division of monastic life into prayer, study
and labour was vital to monasticism itself, since it afforded the
essential element of variety in routine.
The benefits of routine are obvious: any life which exists for the regular
performance of specific duties, above all any life which is carried on in
a community, must depend very largely upon fixed hours and carefully
organised occupations. The Rule of St Benedict made a serious attempt to
render monastic life possible and beneficial to the average human being,
by the combination of regularity and variety which has been described
above. There was constant change of occupation, but there was no waste and
no muddle. It is extremely significant that monasticism broke down
directly St Benedict's careful adjustment of occupations became upset.
With the growing wealth of the monasteries manual labour became
undignified; some orders relied on lay brethren, the majority on servants.
Gone was the day when counts cooked in the kitchens; in the fourteenth
century monks and nuns paid large wages to their cooks and even in a small
nunnery it was regarded as legitimate cause for complaint not to have a
convent servant. Learning also fell away after the growth of the
universities in the twelfth century; the poverty of the monastic
chronicles of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is one witness to the
fact; the necessity to send injunctions to nunneries first in French and
then in English, as the knowledge of Latin and then of French died out in
them, is another. Of the three occupations, learning, manual labour and
divine service, only the last was left. Is it surprising that that also
began to be looked upon as a weary and monotonous routine, when the monks
and nuns came to it, not fresh from the stimulus of study or of labour,
but from indolence, or from the worldly pleasures of the tavern, the hunt,
the gambling board, the flirtation, the gossip, wherewith they often
filled the spare time, which the wise Benedictine Rule would have filled
with a change of occupation?
All safeguards against a petrifying routine were now broken down. We are
wont to-day to look with disquiet upon the life of a clerk in an office,
endlessly adding up rows of figures, with an interval for luncheon; but
the clerk has his evenings, his Sundays, his annual holiday, his life as
son, or husband, or father. For the medieval monk there was no such
relaxation. When the salutary labour of hand and brain ordained by St
Benedict no longer found a place in his life, he was delivered over bound
to an endless routine of dorter, church, frater and cloister, which
stretched from day to night and from night to day again. For nuns the
monotony was even greater, for they had lost more completely than monks
their early tradition of learning and they could not pass happy years in
study at a university (as a few monks from great abbeys were able to do),
nor find some solace in exercising the functions of a priest; moreover
women were more apt even than men to enter the religious life without any
real vocation for it, since there was hardly any other career for
unmarried ladies of gentle birth. It would be an exaggeration to say that
this uneventful life was necessarily distasteful. To the majority it was
doubtless a happy existence; monotony appears peace to those who love it.
No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keep
Crown'd woes awake, as things too wise for sleep:
But reverent discipline and religious fear,
And soft obedience, find sweet biding here;
Silence and sacred rest; peace and pure joys;
Kind loves keep house, lie close and make no noise.
Here behind the walls of the convent "a common grayness silvered
everything" and all care was remote, save that, never to be escaped by
womankind, of making two ends meet.
Nevertheless the danger was there. Only a minority, one may be sure,
revolted actively against the duties which are sometimes, most
significantly, called "the burthen of religion"[913]. That minority is
known to us, for the sinner and the apostate, whether inspired by lust or
by levity, mere victims to their own weakness, or active rebels against an
intolerable dulness, have left their mark in official documents. But the
number can only be guessed at of those others, who carried in their hearts
for all their staid lives the complaint of the Latin song:
Sono tintinnabulum
Repeto psalterium,
Gratum linquo somnium
Cum dormire cuperem,
Heu misella!
Nichil est deterius tali vita
Cum enim sim petulans et lasciva[914].
The bell I am ringing,
The psalter am singing,
And from my bed creeping
Who fain would be sleeping,
Misery me!
O what can be worse than this life that I dree,
When naughty and lovelorn and wanton I be?
"Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room" is a charming justification
of the sonnet, but it is neither good psychology nor good history.
It can never be too often repeated that many monks and nuns entered
religion as a career while still children, with no particular vocation for
the religious life. To such, even though they might experience no longing
for the forbidden pleasures of the world, the monotony of the cloister
would often be hard to bear. Their young limbs would kick against its
restrictions and the changing moods of adolescence would turn and twist in
vain within the iron bars of its unadaptable routine. Even to those no
longer young happiness would depend at the best upon the fostering of a
quick spiritual life, at the worst upon lack of imagination and of
vitality. The undaunted daughter of desires, the man in whom religion
burned as a strong fire, could find happiness in the life. But lesser
brethren could not. Ennui, more deadly even than sensual temptation, was
the devil who tormented them. So in the convents of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, a sympathetic eye and an understanding mind will
diagnose the fundamental disease as reaction against routine by men and
women in whom Nature, expelled by a pitchfork, had returned a thousand
times more strong.
This reaction from routine took several forms. It is somewhere at the
bottom of all the more serious sins, which the pitchfork method of
attaining salvation brought upon human creatures with bodies as well as
souls. In this chapter, however, we are concerned not with these graver
faults of immorality, but with things less gross, and yet in their
cumulative effect no less fatal to monastic life. Such was the neglect of
that praise of God, which was the primary _raison d'etre_ of the monk and
nun, so that services sometimes became empty forms, to be hurried through
with scant devotion, occasionally with scandalous irreverence. Such was
the deadly sin of _accidie_, the name of which is forgotten today, though
the thing itself is with us still. Such were the nerves on edge, the small
quarrels, the wear and tear of communal life; such also the gay clothes,
the pet animals and the worldly amusements, with which nuns sought to
enliven their existence. For all these things were in some sense a
reaction from routine.
Carelessness in the performance of the monastic hours was an exceedingly
common fault during the later middle ages and often finds a place in
episcopal injunctions. Sometimes monks and nuns "cut" the services, as at
Peterborough in 1437, when only ten or twelve of the 44 monks came on
ordinary days to church[915], or at Nuncoton in 1440, where many of the
nuns failed to come to compline, but busied themselves instead in various
domestic offices, or wandered idly in the garden[916]. Often they came
late to matins, a fault which was common in nunneries, for the nuns were
prone to sit up drinking and gossiping after compline, instead of going
straight to bed[917]; and these nocturnal carousals, however harmless in
themselves, did not conduce to wakefulness at one a.m. Consequently they
were somewhat sleepy, _quodammodo sompnolentes_, at matins and found an
almost Johnsonian difficulty in getting up early. At Stainfield in 1519
Atwater found that half an hour sometimes elapsed between the last stroke
of the bell and the beginning of the office and that some of the nuns did
not sing but dozed, partly because they had not enough candles, partly
because they went to bed late; they also performed the offices very
negligently[918]. But most often of all the fault of monks and nuns lay in
gabbling through the services as quickly as possible in order to get them
over. They left out syllables at the beginning and end of words, they
omitted the _dipsalma_ or _pausacio_ between two verses, so that one side
of the choir was beginning the second half, before the other side had
finished the first; they skipped sentences; they mumbled and slurred over
what should have been "entuned in their nose ful semely."
Episcopal injunctions not infrequently animadvert against this irreverent
treatment of the offices. At Catesby in 1442 Isabel Benet asserted that
"divine service is chanted at so great speed that no pauses are made," and
at Carrow in 1526 several of the older nuns complained that the sisters
sang and said the service more quickly than they ought, without due
pauses. A strong injunction sent to Nuncoton in 1531 declares that the
hours have been "doon with grete festinacon, haste and without deuocon,
contrarye to the good manner and ordre of religion"[919]. Indeed so
common was the fault that the Father of Evil was obliged to employ a
special devil called Tittivillus, whose sole business it was to collect
the dropped syllables and gabbled verses and carry them back to his master
in a sack. One rhyme distinguishes carefully between the contents of his
sack:
Hii sunt qui psalmos corrumpunt nequiter almos,
Dangler, cum jasper, lepar, galper quoque draggar,
Momeler, forskypper, forereynner, sic et overleper,
Fragmina verborum Tutivillus colligit horum[920].
A holy Cistercian abbot once interviewed Tittivillus; this is the tale as
the nuns of Syon read it in their _Myroure of Oure Ladye_:
We rede of an holy Abbot of the order of Cystreus that whyle he stode
in the quyer at mattyns, he sawe a fende that had a longe and a greate
poke hangynge about hys necke, and wente aboute the quyer from one to
an other, and wayted bysely after all letters, and syllables, and
wordes, and faylynges, that eny made; and them he gathered dylygently
and putte them in hys poke. And when he came before the Abbot,
waytynge yf oughte had escaped hym, that he myghte have gotten and put
in hys bagge; the Abbot was astoned and aferde of the foulenes and
mysshape of hym, and sayde vnto hym. What art thow; And he answered
and sayd. I am a poure dyuel, and my name ys Tytyuyllus, and I do myne
offyce that is commytted vnto me. And what is thyne offyce sayd the
Abbot, he answeryd I muste eche day he sayde brynge my master a
thousande pokes full of faylynges, and of neglygences in syllables and
wordes, that ar done in youre order in redynge and in syngynge. And
else I must be sore beten[921].
Carelessness in the singing of the services was not, however, the most
serious result of reaction against routine. If the men and women of
sensibility failed to keep intelligence active in the pursuit of spiritual
or temporal duties, if they cared no longer to use brain and spirit as
they performed the daily round, _accidia_[922], that dread disease, half
ennui and half melancholia, which, though common to all men, was
recognised as the peculiar menace of the cloister, lay ever in wait for
them. Against this sin of intellectual and spiritual sloth all the great
churchmen of the middle ages inveigh, recognising in it the greatest
menace of religious life, from which all other sins may follow[923]. If
_accidia_ once laid hold upon a monk he was lost; ceasing to perform with
active mind his religious duties, he would find them a meaningless,
endless routine, filling him with irritation, with boredom and with a
melancholy against which he might struggle in vain. The fourth century
cenobite Cassian has left a detailed description of the effects of
_accidia_ in the cloister, declaring that it was specially disturbing to a
monk about the sixth hour "like some fever which seizes him at stated
times," so that many declared that this was "the sickness that destroyeth
in the noon day," spoken of in the ninetieth psalm[924]. Many centuries
later Dante crystallised it in four unsurpassable lines. As he passed
through the fifth circle of hell he saw a black and filthy marsh, in which
struggled the souls of those who had been overcome by anger; but deeper
than the angry were submerged other souls, whose sobs rose in bubbles
through the muddy water and who could only gurgle their confession in
their throats. These were the souls of men who had fallen victims to the
sin of _accidia_ in their lives
Fitti nel limo dicon: Tristi fummo
Nel' aer dolce che dal sol s' allegra,
Portando dentro accidioso fummo:
Or ci attristiam nella belletta negra.
Fixed in the slime, they say, "Sullen were we in the sweet air, that
is gladdened by the sun, carrying lazy smoke in our hearts; now lie we
sullen here in the black mire"[925].
But the working of the poison is most brilliantly described by Chaucer, in
his _Persones Tale_:
"After the sinnes of Envie and of Ire, now wol I speken of the sinne
of Accidie. For Envye blindeth the herte of a man, and Ire troubleth a
man; and Accidie maketh him hevy, thoghtful and wrawe. Envye and Ire
maken bitternesse in herte; which bitternesse is moder of Accidie and
binimeth him the love of alle goodnesse. Thanne is Accidie the
anguissh of a trouble herte.... He dooth alle thing with anoy and with
wrawnesse, slaknesse and excusacioun, and with ydelnesse and
unlust.... Now comth Slouthe, that wol nat sufre noon hardnesse ne no
penaunce.... Thanne comth drede to biginne to werke any gode werkes;
for certes he that is enclyned to sinne, him thinketh it is so greet
an empryse for to undertake to doon werkes of goodnesse.... Now comth
wanhope, that is despeir of the mercy of God, that comth somtyme of to
muche outrageous sorwe, and somtyme of to muche drede; imagininge that
he hath doon so much sinne, that it wol nat availlen him, though he
wolde repenten him and forsake sinne: thurgh which despeir or drede he
abaundoneth al his herte to every maner sinne, as seith seint
Augustin. Which dampnable sinne, if that it continue unto his ende, it
is cleped sinning in the holy gost.... Soothly he that despeireth him
is lyk the coward champioun recreant, that seith creant withoute nede.
Allas! allas! nedeles is he recreant and nedeles despeired. Certes the
mercy of God is euere redy to every penitent and is aboven alle hise
werkes.... Thanne cometh sompnolence, that is sluggy slombringe, which
maketh a man be hevy and dul in body and in soule; and this sinne
comth of Slouthe."
He proceeds to describe further symptoms,
"Necligence or recchelnesse ... ydelnesse ... the sinne that man
clepen _Tarditas_" and "Lachesse,"
and concludes thus,
"Thanne comth a manere coldnesse, that freseth al the herte of man.
Thanne comth undevocioun, thurgh which a man is so blent, as seith
seint Bernard, and hath swiche langour in soule, that he may neither
rede ne singe in holy chirche, ne here ne thinke of no devocioun, ne
travaille with his handes in no good werk, that it nis him unsavory
and al apalled. Thanne wexeth he slow and slombry, and sone wol be
wrooth, and sone is enclyned to hate and to envye. Thanne comth the
sinne of worldly sorwe, swich as is cleped _tristicia_, that sleeth
man, as seint Paul seith. For certes swich sorwe werketh to the deeth
of the soule and of the body also; for therof comth, that a man is
anoyed of his owene lyf. Wherfore swich sorwe shorteth ful ofte the
lyf of a man, er that his tyme be come by wey of kinde"[926].
This masterly diagnosis of the sin of spiritual sloth and its branches is
illustrated by several stories which bear unmistakably the impress of a
dreadful truth. Johann Busch's account of his early temptations and doubts
has often been quoted. A strong character, he overcame the temptation and
emerged stronger[927]. But Caesarius of Heisterbach has two anecdotes of
weaker brethren which show how exactly Chaucer described the anguish of a
troubled heart. The first is of particular interest to us because it
concerns a woman:
"A certain nun, a woman of advanced age, and, as was supposed, of
great holiness, was so overcome by the vice of melancholy
(_tristitiae_) and so vexed with a spirit of blasphemy, doubt and
distrust, that she fell into despair. And she began altogether to
doubt those things which she had believed from infancy and which it
behoved her to believe, nor could she be induced by anyone to take the
holy sacraments; and when her sisters and also her nieces in the flesh
besought her why she was thus hardened, she answered "I am of the
lost, of those who shall be damned." One day the Prior, growing angry,
said to her, "Sister, unless you recover from your unbelief, when you
die I will have you buried in a field." And she, hearing him, was
silent but kept his words in her heart. One day, when certain of the
sisters were to go on a journey I know not whither, she secretly
followed them to the banks of the river Moselle, whereon the monastery
is situated, and when the ship, which was carrying the sisters, put
off, she threw herself from the shore into the river. Those who were
in the ship heard the sound of a splash, and looking out thought her
body to be a dog, but one of them, desiring (by God's will) to know
more certainly what it was, ran quickly to the place and seeing a
human being, entered the river and drew her out. Then when they
perceived that it was the aforesaid nun, already wellnigh drowned,
they were all frightened, and when they had cared for her and she had
coughed up the water and could speak, they asked her, "Why, sister,
didst thou act thus cruelly?" and she replied, pointing to the Prior,
"My lord there threatened that I should be buried when dead in a
field, wherefore I preferred to be drowned in the flood rather than to
be buried like a beast in the field." Then they led her back to the
monastery and guarded her more carefully. Behold what great evil is
born of melancholy (_tristitia_). That woman was brought up from
infancy in the monastery. She was a chaste, devout, stern and
religious virgin, and, as the mistress [of the novices] of a
neighbouring monastery told me, all the maidens educated by her were
of better discipline and more devout than others"[928].
The other anecdote tells of an old lay brother, who at the end of a long
life fell into despair:
"I know not," says Caesarius, "by what judgment of God he was made
thus sad and fearful, that he was so greatly afraid for his sins and
despaired altogether of the life eternal. He did not indeed doubt in
his faith, but rather despaired of salvation. He could be cheered by
no scriptural authorities and brought back to the hope of forgiveness
by no examples. Yet he is believed to have sinned but little. When the
brothers asked him, 'What makes you fear, why do you despair?' he
answered, 'I cannot pray as I was used to do, and so I fear hell.'
Because he laboured with the vice of _tristitia_, therefore he was
filled with _accidia_, and from each of these was despair born in his
heart. He was placed in the infirmary and on a certain morning he
prepared him for death, and came to his master, saying, 'I can no
longer fight against God.' And when his master paid but little
attention to his words, he went forth to the fish pond of the
monastery near by and threw himself into it and was drowned"[929].
Only a small minority, it is needless to say, was driven to this anguish
of despair. For the majority the strain of conventual life found outlet,
not in these black moods, but in a tendency to bicker one with another, to
get excitement by exaggerating the small events of daily existence into
matter for jealousies and disputes. For the strain was a double one; to
monotony was added the complete lack of privacy, the wear and tear of
communal life; not only always doing the same thing at the same time, but
always doing it in company with a number of other people. The beauty of
human fellowship, the happy friendliness of life in a close society are
too obvious to need description.
For if heuene be on this erthe . and ese to any soule,
It is in cloistere or in scole . by many skilles I fynde;
For in cloistre cometh no man . to chide ne to fighte,
But alle is buxomnesse there and bokes . to rede and to lerne,
In scole there is scorne . but if a clerke wil lerne,
And grete loue and lykynge . for eche of hem loueth other[930].
But it is necessary also to remember the other side of the picture.
Personal idiosyncrasies were no less apt to jar in the middle ages than
they are today; there are unfortunates who are born to be unpopular; there
are tempers which will lose themselves; and in conventual life there is no
balm of solitude for frayed nerves. These nuns were very human people; a
mere accident of birth had probably sent them to a convent rather than to
the care of husband and children in a manor-hall; just as in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a mere accident of birth made one son
the squire, another the soldier and a third the parson. No special
saintliness of disposition was theirs and no miracle intervened to render
them immune from tantrums when they crossed the convent threshold. Nothing
is at once more striking and more natural than the prevalence of little
quarrels, sometimes growing into serious disputes, among the inmates of
monasteries. Browning's Spanish Cloister was no mere figment of his
inventive brain; indeed it is, if anything, less startling than the
medieval Langland's description of the convent, where Wrath was cook and
where all was far from "buxomnesse." Certainly Langland's indictment is a
violent one; the satirist must darken his colours to catch the eye; and,
had Chaucer been the painter, we might have had a dispute couched in more
courteous terms and more "estatlich of manere." But the satirist's account
is significant, because his very office demands that he shall exaggerate
only what exists; his words are a smoke which cannot rise without fire. So
Langland may speak through the lips of Wrath, with two white eyes:
I have an aunte to nonne . and an abbesse bothe,
Hir were leuere swowe or swelte . şan suffre any peyne.
I haue be cook in hir kichyne . and şe couent serued
Many monthes with hem . and with monkes bothe.
I was şe priouresses potagere . and other poure ladyes
And made hem ioutes of iangelynge . şat dame Iohanne was a bastard,
And dame Clarice a knightes doughter . ac a kokewolde was hire syre,
And dame Peronelle a prestes file . Priouresse worth she neuere
For she had childe in chirityme . all owre chapitere it wiste .
Of wycked wordes I, Wrath . here wortes imade,
Til "thow lixte" and "thow lixte" lopen oute at ones,
And eyther hitte other . vnder the cheke;
Hadde thei had knyves, by Cryst . her eyther had killed other[931].
From "thow lixte" to "Gr-r-r you swine" how little change!
Sober records bear out Langland's contention that Wrath was at home in
nunneries. Some of the worst cases have already been described; election
disputes, disputes arising from a prioress's favouritism, Margaret Wavere
dragging her nuns about the choir by their hair, and screaming insults at
them, Katherine Wells hitting them on the head with fists and feet[932].
Doubtless quarrels seldom got as far as blows; but bad temper and wordy
warfare were common. Insubordination was sometimes at the root of the
discord; nuns refused to submit meekly to correction after the
proclamation of their faults in chapter, or to obey their superiors. The
words of another satirist show that the monastic vow of obedience
sometimes sat lightly upon their shoulders:
Also another lady there was
That hyght dame dysobedyent
And sche set nowght by her priores.
Ans than me thowght alle was schent,
For sugettys schulde euyr be dylygent
Bothe in worde, in wylle and dede,
To plese her souerynes wyth gode entent,
And hem obey, ellys god forbede.
And of alle the defawtes that I cowde se
Thorowgh schewyng of experience,
Hyt was one of the most that grevyd me,
The wantyng of obedyence
For hyt schulde be chese in consciens
Alle relygius rule wytnesseth the same
And when I saw her in no reverence,
I myght no lenger abyde for schame,
For they setten not by obedyence.
And than for wo myne hert gan blede
Ne they hadden her in no reuerence,
But few or none to her toke hede[933].
Again the colours are darkened, but the eyes of the satirist had seen.
At St Mary's, Winchester, insubordination was evidently the chief fault.
William of Wykeham writes to the Abbess:
By public rumour it has come to our ears that some of the nuns of the
aforesaid house ... care not to submit to or even to obey you and the
deans and other obedientiaries lawfully constituted by you in those
things which concern regular observances nor to show them due
reverence, and that they will not bear or undergo the reproofs and
corrections inflicted upon them by their superiors for their faults,
but break out into vituperation and altercation with each other and in
no way submit to these corrections; meanwhile other nuns of your house
by detractions, conspiracies, confederacies, leagues, obloquies,
contradictions and other breaches of discipline (_insolenciis_) and
laxities (concerning which we speak not at present)
neglect the rule of St Benedict and other due observances. The Abbess is
warned to punish the nuns and to enforce the rule more firmly than
heretofore and to furnish the Bishop with the names of rebels. At the same
time he addresses a letter to the nuns bidding them show obedience to
their superiors and receive correction humbly "henceforth blaming no one
therefore nor altercating one with another, saying that these or those
were badly or excessively punished"[934]. It would seem that discipline
had become lax in the convent and that the Bishop's attempt to introduce
reform by the agency of the abbess was meeting with opposition from unruly
nuns. Visitors were forced constantly to make the double injunction that
nuns should show obedience to their superiors and that those superiors
should be equable and not harsh in correction:
Also we enioyne you, pryoresse, ... that oftentymes ye come to the
chapitere for to correcte the defautes of your susters, and that as
wele then as att other tymes and places ye treyte your said susters
moderlie wyth all resonable fauour; and that ye rebuke ne repreue
thaym cruelly ne feruently at no tyme, specyally in audience of
seculeres, and that ye kepe pryvye fro seculeres your correccyons and
actes of your chapitere.... Also we enioyne yowe of the couent and
eueryche oon of yowe vndere peyn of imprisonyng, that mekely and
buxumly ye obeye the prioresse procedyng discretely in hire
correccyone, and also that in euery place ye do hire dewe reuerence,
absteynyng yowe fro all elacyone of pryde and wordes of disobeysaunce
or debate[935].
Sometimes it was one unruly member who set the convent by the ears. There
is an amusing case at Romsey, which is reminiscent of David Copperfield:
On 16 January 1527 in the chapter house of the monastery of Romsey,
before the vicar general, sitting judicially, Lady Alice Gorsyn
appeared and confessed that she had used bad language with her sisters
[her greatest oath evidently transcended "by seynt Loy"] and spread
abroad reproachful and defamatory words of them. He absolved her from
the sentence of excommunication and enjoined on her in penance that if
she used bad language in future and spread about defamatory words of
them, a red tongue made of cloth should be used on the barbe under the
chin (_in sua barba alba_) and remain there for a month[936].
a kinder punishment than the scold's bridle or the ducking stool of common
folk. Occasionally an inveterate scold would be removed altogether by the
Bishop and sent to some convent where she was not known; two nuns were
transferred from Burnham to Goring in 1339 "for the peace and quiet of the
house" and in 1298 a quarrelsome nun of Nuncoton was sent to Greenfield to
be kept in solitary confinement as long as she remained incorrigible,
"until according to the discipline of her order she shall know how to live
in a community"[937]. It was more difficult to restore peace when a whole
nunnery was seething with dispute and heart-burnings. General injunctions
to cease quarrelling would seem to show that this was sometimes the case,
and, without having recourse to such an extreme instance as that of
Littlemore in the sixteenth century, it is possible to quote from bishops'
registers documents which go far to bear out even Langland's picture. One
such document may be quoted in illustration, the _comperta_ of Archbishop
Giffard's visitation of Swine in 1268:
It is discovered that Amice de Rue is a slanderer and a liar and
impatient and odious to the convent and a rebel; and so are almost all
the convent when the misdeeds of delinquents are proclaimed in
chapter; wherefore the prioress or whoever is acting for her is not
sufficient, without the help of the lord archbishop, to make
corrections according to the requirements of the rule.... Item, it is
discovered that three sisters in the flesh and spirit, to wit, Sibyl,
Bella and Amy, frequently rebel against the corrections of the
Prioress, and having leagued together with them several other sisters,
they conspire against their sisters, to the great harm of the regular
discipline; and Alice de Scrutevil, Beatrice de St Quintin and Maud
Constable cleave to them.... Item, it is discovered that the Prioress
is a suspicious woman and too credulous and breaks out at a mere word
into correction, and frequently punishes unequally for the same fault
and pursues with long rancour those whom she dislikes, until the time
of their vindication cometh; whence it befals that the nuns, when they
suspect that they are going to be burdened with too heavy a
correction, procure the mitigation of her severity by means of the
threats of their relatives. Item, it is discovered that the nuns and
the sisters are at discord in many things, because the sisters contend
that they are equal to the nuns and use black veils even as the
nuns[938], which is said not to be the custom in other houses of the
same order[939].
Apostasy, _accidia_, quarrels, all rose in part from monotony. The
majority of nuns were probably content with their life, but they strove to
bring some excitement and variety into it, not only unconsciously by
cliques and contentions, but also by a conscious aping of the worldly
amusements which enlivened their mothers and sisters outside the convent
walls. The chatelaine or mistress of a manor, when not busied with the
care of an estate, amused herself in the pursuit of fashion; even the
business-like Margaret Paston hankered after a scarlet robe. She amused
herself with keeping pets, those little dogs which scamper so gaily round
the borders of manuscripts, or play so gallant a part in romances like
the Chatelaine of Vergi. She hawked and she hunted, she danced and she
played at tables[940]. All these occupations served to break the monotony
of daily life. The nuns, always in touch with the world owing to the
influx of visitors and to the neglect of enclosure, remembered these
forbidden pleasures. And they sought to spice their monotonous life, as
they spiced their monotonous dishes. Gay clothes, pet animals, a dance, a
game, a gossip, were to them "a ferthyngworth of fenel-seed for
fastyngdayes." So we find all these worldly amusements in the convent.
Dear to the soul of men and women alike, dear to monks and nuns as well as
to the children of the world, were the gay colours and extravagant modes
of contemporary dress. Popular preachers inveighed against the devils'
trappings of their flocks, but when those trappings flaunted themselves in
the cloister there was matter for more than words. As early as the end of
the seventh century St Aldhelm penned a severe indictment of the
fashionable nuns of his day:
A vest of fine linen of a violet colour is worn, above it a scarlet
tunic with a hood, sleeves striped with silk and trimmed with red fur;
the locks on the forehead and the temples are curled with a crisping
iron, the dark head-veil is given up for white and coloured
head-dresses, which, with bows of ribbon sewn on, reach down to the
ground; the nails, like those of a falcon or sparrow-hawk, are pared
to resemble talons[941].
Synods sat solemnly over silken veils and pleated robes with long trains;
they shook their heads over golden pins and silver belts, jewelled rings,
laced shoes, cloth of burnet and of Rennes, dresses open at the sides, gay
colours (especially red) and fur of _gris_[942]. High brows were
fashionable in the world and the nuns could not resist lifting and
spreading out their veils to expose those fair foreheads ("almost a
spanne brood, I trowe"); when Alnwick visited Goring in 1445 he
saw with the evidence of his own eyes that the nuns do wear their
veils spread out on either side and above their foreheads, (and) he
enjoined upon the prioress ... that she should wear and cause her
sisters to wear their veils spread down to their eyes[943].
The words of Beatrix's maid in _Much Ado About Nothing_ spring to the
mind: "But methinks you look with your eyes as other women do." For three
weary centuries the bishops waged a holy war against fashion in the
cloister and waged it in vain, for as long as the nuns mingled freely with
secular women it was impossible to prevent them from adopting secular
modes. Occasionally a conscientious visitor found himself floundering
unhandily through something very like a complete catalogue of contemporary
fashions. So Bishop Longland at Elstow in 1531:
We ordeyne and by way of Iniuncon commande undre payne of disobedyence
from hensforth that no ladye ne any religious suster within the said
monasterye presume to were ther apparells upon ther hedes undre suche
lay fashion as they have now of late doon with cornered crests, nether
undre suche manour of hight shewing ther forhedes moore like lay
people than religious, butt that they use them without suche crestes
or secular fashions and off a lower sort and that ther vayle come as
lowe as ther yye ledes and soo contynually to use the same, unles itt
be at suche tymes as they shalbe occupied in eny handycrafte labour,
att whiche tymes itt shalbe lefull for them to turne upp the said
vayle for the tyme of suche occupacon. And undre like payne inoyne
that noon of the said religious susters doo use or were hereafter eny
such voyded shoys, nether crested as they have of late ther used, butt
that they be of suche honeste fashion as other religious places both
use and that ther gownes and kyrtells be closse afore and nott so depe
voyded at the breste and noo more to use rede stomachers but other
sadder colers in the same[944].
It is interesting to conjecture how the nuns obtained these gay garments
and ornaments. The growing custom of giving them a money allowance out of
which to dress themselves instead of providing them with clothes in kind
out of the common purse, certainly must have given opportunity for buying
the gilt pins, barred belts and slashed shoes which so horrified their
visitors. We know from Gilles li Muisis that Flemish nuns at least went
shopping[945]. But an even more likely source of supply lies, as we shall
see, in the legacies of clothes and ornaments, which were often left to
nuns by their relatives[946].
Not only in their clothes did medieval nuns seek to enliven existence
after the manner of their lay sisters. The bishops struggled long and
unsuccessfully against another custom of worldly women, the keeping of pet
animals[947]. Dogs were certainly the favourite pets. Cats are seldom
mentioned, though the three anchoresses of the _Ancren Riwle_ were
specially permitted to keep one[948], and Gyb, that "cat of carlyshe
kynde," which slew Philip Sparrow, apparently belonged to Carrow; perhaps
there was spread among the nunneries of England the grisly tradition of
the Prioress of Newington, who was smothered in bed by her cat[949].
Birds, from the larks of the Abbaye-aux-Dames at Caen, to the parrot
Vert-Vert at Nevers, are often mentioned[950]. Monkeys, squirrels and
rabbits were also kept. But dogs and puppies abounded. Partly because the
usages of society inevitably found their way into the aristocratic
convents, partly because human affections will find an outlet under the
most severe of rules:
(Objet permis a leur oisif amour,
Vert-Vert etait l'ame de ce sejour),
the nuns clung to their "smale houndes." Archbishop Peckham had to forbid
the Abbess of Romsey to keep monkeys or "a number of dogs" in her own
chamber and she was charged at the same time with stinting her nuns in
food; one can guess what became of the "rosted flesh or milk and
wastel-breed"[951]. At Chatteris and at Ickleton in 1345 the nuns were
forbidden to keep fowls, dogs or small birds within the precincts of the
convent or to bring them into church during divine service[952]. This
bringing of animals into church was a common custom in the middle ages,
when ladies often attended service with dog in lap and men with hawk on
wrist[953]; Lady Audley's twelve dogs, which so disturbed the nuns of
Langley, will be remembered[954]. Injunctions against the bringing of dogs
or puppies into choir by the nuns are also found at Keldholme and Rosedale
early in the fourteenth century[955]. But the most flagrant case of all is
Romsey, to which in 1387 William of Wykeham wrote as follows:
Item, because we have convinced ourselves by clear proofs that some of
the nuns of your house bring with them to church birds, rabbits,
hounds and such like frivolous things, whereunto they give more heed
than to the offices of the church, with frequent hindrance to their
own psalmody and that of their fellow nuns and to the grievous peril
of their souls; therefore we strictly forbid you, all and several, in
virtue of the obedience due unto us, that you presume henceforward to
bring to church no birds, hounds, rabbits or other frivolous things
that promote indiscipline; and any nun who does to the contrary, after
three warnings shall fast on bread and water on one Saturday for each
offence, notwithstanding one discipline to be received publicly in
chapter on the same day.... Item, whereas through the hunting-dogs and
other hounds abiding within your monastic precincts, the alms that
should be given to the poor are devoured and the church and cloister
and other places set apart for divine and secular services are foully
defiled, contrary to all honesty, and whereas, through their
inordinate noise, divine service is frequently troubled, therefore we
strictly command and enjoin you, Lady Abbess, in virtue of obedience,
that you remove these dogs altogether and that you suffer them never
henceforth, nor any other such hounds, to abide within the precincts
of your nunnery[956].
But the crusade against pets was not more successful than the crusade
against fashions. The feminine fondness for something small and alive to
pet was not easily eradicated and it seems that visitors were sometimes
obliged to indulge it. The wording of Peckham's decree leaves an opening
for the retention of one humble and very self-effacing little dog, not
prone to unseemly yelps and capers before the stony eye of my lord the
Archbishop on his rounds; Dean Kentwode in the fifteenth century ordered
the Prioress of St Helen's Bishopsgate, to remove dogs "and content
herself with one or two"[957], and in 1520 the Prioress of Flixton was
bidden to send all dogs away from the convent "except one which she
prefers"[958]. Perhaps the welcome of a thumping tail and damp,
insinuating nose occasionally overcame the scruples even of a Bishop, who
probably kept dogs himself and mourned
if oon of hem were deed,
Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte.
Dogs kept for hunting purposes come into rather a different category. It
is well known that medieval monks were mighty hunters before the
Lord[959], and the mention of sporting dogs at Romsey and at Brewood
(where Bishop Norbury found _canes venatici_[960]) encourages speculation
as to whether the nuns also were not "pricasours aright" and
yaf not of that text a pulled hen
That seith that hunters been nat holy men.
It is significant that Dame Juliana Berners is supposed by tradition
(unsupported, however, by any other evidence) to have been a prioress of
Sopwell. The gift of hunting rights to a nunnery is a common one; for
instance, Henry II granted to Wix the right of having two greyhounds and
four braches to take hares through the whole forest of Essex[961].
Doubtless these rights were usually exercised by proxy[962]; but
considering the popularity of hunting and hawking as sports for women, a
popularity so great that no lady's education was complete if she knew not
how to manage a hawk and bear herself courteously in the field, it is
surprising that there is not actual mention of these pastimes among nuns
as well as among monks.
Besides gay clothes and pets other frivolous amusements broke at times the
monotony of convent life. Dancing and mumming and minstrelsy were not
unknown and the nuns shared in the merrymaking on feasts sacred and
profane, as is witnessed by the account rolls of St Mary de Pre (1461-90),
with their list of payments for wassail at New Year and Twelfth Night, for
May games, for bread and ale on bonfire nights and for harpers and players
at Christmas[963]. In 1435 the nuns of Lymbrook were forbidden "all maner
of mynstrelseys, enterludes, daunsyng or reuelyng with in your sayde holy
place"[964], and about the same time Dean Kentwode wrote to St Helen's
Bishopsgate: "Also we enioyne you that all daunsyng and reuelyng be
utterly forborne among yow, except Christmasse and other honest tymys of
recreacyone among yowre self usyd in absence of seculars in all
wyse"[965]. The condemnation of dancing in nunneries is not surprising,
for the attitude of medieval moralists generally to this pastime is summed
up in Etienne de Bourbon's aphorism, "The Devil is the inventor and
governor and disposer of dances and dancers"[966]. Minstrels were
similarly under the ban of the church, and clerks were forbidden by canon
law and by numerous papal, conciliar and episcopal injunctions to listen
to their "ignominious art"[967], a regulation which, needless to say, went
unobeyed in an age when many a bishop had his private _histrio_[968], and
when the same stern reformer Grosseteste, who warned his clergy "ne mimis,
ioculatoribus aut histrionibus intendant," loved so much to hear the harp
that he kept his harper's chamber "next hys chaumbre besyde hys
stody"[969]. Langland asserts that churchmen and laymen alike spent on
minstrels money with which they well might have succoured the poor:
Clerkus and knyghtes . welcometh kynges mynstrales,
And for loue of here lordes . lithen hem at festes;
Muche more, me thenketh . riche men auhte
Haue beggars by-fore hem . which beth godes mynstrales[970].
Even in monasteries they found a ready welcome[971] and the reforming
council of Oxford passed an ineffectual decree forbidding their
performances to be seen or heard or allowed before the abbot or monks, if
they came to a house for alms[972]. Indeed there was sometimes need for
care. Where but at one of those minstrelsies or interludes forbidden at
Lymbrook did sister Agnes of St Michael's Priory, Stamford, meet a
jongleur, who sang softly in her ear that Lenten was come with love to
town? The Devil (alas) had all the good tunes, even in the fifteenth
century. "One Agnes, a nun of that place," reported the Prioress, "has
gone away into apostasy cleaving to a harp-player, and they dwell
together, as it is said, in Newcastle-on-Tyne"[973]. For her no longer the
strait discipline of her rule, the black-robed nuns and heaven at the
end. For her the life of the roads, the sore foot and the light heart; for
her the company of ribalds with their wenches, and all the thriftless,
shiftless player-folk; for her, at the last, hell, with "the gold and the
silver and the vair and the gray, ... harpers and minstrels and kings of
the world"[974], or a desperate hope that the Virgin's notorious kindness
for minstrels might snatch her soul from perdition[975].
But the merrymakers in nunneries were not necessarily strange jongleurs or
secular folk. The dancing and revelry, which were forbidden at Lymbrook
and allowed in Christmastime at St Helen's, were probably connected with
the children's feast of St Nicholas. As early as the twelfth century the
days immediately before and after Christmas had become, in ecclesiastical
circles, the occasion for uproarious festivities[976]. The three days
after Christmas were appropriated by the three orders of the Church. On St
Stephen's Day (Dec. 26) the deacons performed the service, elected their
Abbot of Fools and paraded the streets, levying contributions from the
householders and passers-by; on St John the Evangelist's Day (Dec. 27) the
deacons gave way to the priests, who "gave a mock blessing and proclaimed
a ribald form of indulgence"; and on Innocents' Day it was the turn of the
choir or schoolboys to hold their feast. In cathedral and monastic
churches the Boy Bishop (who had been elected on December 5th, the Eve of
St Nicholas, patron saint of schoolboys) attended service on the eve of
Innocents' Day, and at the words of the Magnificat "He hath put down the
mighty from their seat" changed places with the Bishop or Dean or Abbot,
and similarly the canons and other dignitaries of the church changed
places with the boys. On Innocents' Day all services, except the essential
portions of the mass, were performed by the Boy Bishop; he and his staff
processed through the streets, levying large contributions of food and
money and for about a fortnight his rule continued, accompanied by
feasting and merrymaking, plays, disguisings and dances. These Childermas
festivities took place in monastic as well as in secular churches, but
they seem to have been more common in nunneries than in male communities.
Our chief information about the revelries comes from Archbishop Eudes
Rigaud's province of Rouen[977]; but English records also contain
scattered references to the custom. Evidently a Girl Abbess or Abbess of
Fools was elected from among the novices, and at the _Deposuit_ she and
her fellow novices, or the little schoolgirls, took the place of the
Abbess and nuns, just as the Boy Bishop held sway in cathedral churches,
and feasting, dancing and disguising brought a welcome diversion into the
lives of both nuns and children. Even the strict Peckham was obliged to
extend a grudging consent to the _puerilia solemnia_ held on Innocents'
Day at Barking and at Godstow (1279), insisting only that they should not
be continued during the whole octave of Childermas-tide and should be
conducted with decency and in private:
The celebration of the Feast of Innocents by children, which we do not
approve, but rather suffer with disapproval, is on no account to be
undertaken by those children, nor are they to take any part in it,
until after the end of the vespers of St John the Evangelist's Day;
and the nuns are not to retire from the office, but having excluded
from the choir all men and women ... they are themselves to supply the
absence of the little ones lest (which God forbid) the divine praise
should become a mockery[978].
A more specific reference still is found at Carrow in 1526; Dame Joan
Botulphe deposed at a visitation that it was customary at Christmas for
the youngest nun to hold sway for the day as abbess and on that day (added
the soured ancient) was consumed and dissipated everything that the house
had acquired by alms or by the gift of friends[979]. The connection
between these revels and the Feast of Fools appears clearly in the
injunction sent by Bishop Longland to Nuncoton about the same time:
We chardge you, lady priores, that ye suffre nomore hereafter eny
lorde of mysrule to be within your house, nouther to suffre hereafter
eny suche disgysinge as in tymes past haue bene used in your monastery
in nunnes apparell ne otherwise[980].
The admission of seculars dressed up as nuns, and of boys dressed up as
women, the performance of interludes and the wild dancing were reason
enough for the distaste with which ecclesiastical authorities regarded
these festivities. For the nuns clearly did not exclude strangers as
Peckham had bidden. Indeed it seems probable that where they did not elect
a Girl Abbess, they admitted a Boy Bishop, either from some neighbouring
church, or just possibly one of their own little schoolboys. Among the
accounts of St Swithun's monastery at Winchester for 1441 there is a
payment
for the boys of the Almonry together with the boys of the chapel of St
Elizabeth, dressed up after the manner of girls, dancing, singing and
performing plays before the Abbess and nuns of St Mary's Abbey in
their hall on the Feast of Innocents[981];
and the account of Christian Bassett, Prioress of St Mary de Pre, contains
an item "paid for makyng of the dyner to the susters upon Childermasday
iij s iiij d, item paid for brede and ale for seint Nicholas clerks iij
d"[982]. The inventories of Cheshunt and Sheppey at the time of the
Dissolution contain further references to the custom and seem to show that
nunneries occasionally "ran" a St Nicholas Bishop of their own: at
Cheshunt there was found in the dorter "a chisell (chasuble) of white
ffustyan and a myter for a child bysshoppe at xx d"[983], and at Sheppey,
in a chapel, "ij olde myters for S. Nicholas of fustyan brodered"[984].
These childish festivities sound harmless and attractive enough, and
modern writers are sometimes apt to sentimentalise over their abolition by
Henry VIII[985]. But in this, as in his injunction of enclosure, Henry
was fully in accordance with the best ecclesiastical precedent. For the
Boy Bishop was originally a part of the Feast of Fools and the Feast of
Fools had an ancient and disreputable ancestry in the Roman Saturnalia. At
a very early date a regulation made to curtail such performances at St
Paul's declared that "what had been invented for the praise of sucklings
had been converted into a disgrace"[986]. In 1445, at Paris, it was stated
by the Faculty of Theology at the University that the performers
appeared in masks with the faces of monsters or in the dresses of
women, sang improper songs in the choir, ate fat pork on the horns of
the altar, close by the priest celebrating mass, played dice on the
altar, used stinking incense made of old shoes, and ran about the
choir leaping and shouting[987];
and about the same time the Synod of Basle had specifically denounced the
children's festival in hardly less violent terms as
that disgraceful, bad custom practised in some churches, by which on
certain high days during the year some with mitre, staff and
pontifical vestments like Bishops and others dressed as kings and
princes bless the people; the which festival in some places is called
the Feast of Fools or Innocents or Boys, and some making games with
masks and mummeries, others dances and breakdowns of males and
females, move people to look on with guffaws, while others make
drinkings and feasts there[988].
It is only necessary to compare these denunciations with such accounts of
the festivities in nunneries as have survived, to understand that the
revelling and disguising were less harmless than modern writers are apt to
represent them. Mr Leach attributes the schoolboys' feast to the fact that
regular holidays were unknown in the medieval curriculum and that the boys
found in the ribaldries of Childermastide some outlet for their long
suppressed spirits. Similarly the cramped and solemn existence led by the
nuns for the rest of the year probably made their one outbreak the more
violent. Nevertheless one cannot avoid feeling somewhat out of sympathy
with the bishops. "Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall
be no more cakes and ale?" Nuns were ever fond of ginger "hot i' the
mouth."